Emily E. Hergesheimer and Her Patriot Ancestor

Emily Elisabeth (Hergesheimer)
Sommer, about 1923

Around 1922, my grandmother, Emily E. (Hergesheimer) Sommer, sought to become a member of the Daughters of the American Revolution. That she wanted this very badly is revealed through her correspondence with a Philadelphia genealogist, Mame Ellison Wood, and various heads of archives and agencies.  She achieved her desire on October 16, 1923, when she became national member 192821. I have the draft of her application, and I have seen the actual application on file at the D.A.R. library. Despite the great love I have for Grandma, I have to say that her D.A.R. application might stand as an exemplar of the worst lineage society application imaginable. I also have to say, shame on the D.A.R. for accepting it!

Grandma claimed she was great-great granddaughter of Johann Christoph Hergesheimer, known as Christopher Hergesheimer (1739-1808) to his descendants, of Germantown, Philadelphia County, Pennsylvania. The Records of the Comptroller General for Pennsylvania show that “Christn. Hergashimer was enrolled as a Sergeant in the Fourth Class, Captain Christian Snyder's Third Company, Second Battalion, Philadelphia County Militia, according to the evidence of an undated Return of the First-Fifth Classes for the year 1777”. According to the Pennsylvania Archives, 6^th Series, Vol. 1, the 1780 muster rolls of the Fourth Class, Fifth Company, Seventh Battalion, Philadelphia County Militia includes “Christ’r Hergashimer” (p. 929) and “Christopher Hergshimer” (p. 937). Anyone who could prove descent from Christopher was eligible the become a member of the D.A.R.

I often wonder if Grandma were told when she was growing up that she was descended from Christopher Hergesheimer. Or had she begun her quest for a D.A.R. membership by looking up family surnames, came across Christopher’s name and assumed, as a Germantown Hergesheimer herself, that she must be his descendant? I know from her own research notes that she was familiar with the Pennsylvania Archives series, because she made a number of notes regarding another Germantown ancestor, Conrad Root. Had she found the above reference to Christopher there as well?

Because Grandma’s application was so poorly documented, the D.A.R. asked for additional information to support her lineage claim. With the help of Philadelphia genealogist Mame Ellison Wood, Grandma provided the D.A.R. with four typed pages of miscellaneous facts. While the pages didn’t prove the connection Grandma intended to make, they include this assertion:

Both CHARLES HERGESHEIMER and CATHARINE, his wife are buried in Lot #81 Hood’s Cemetery with CHRISTOPHER HERGESHEIMER, Revolutionary Soldier. One of the relics now in our family is the deed to this lot—Lot purchased by Christopher Hergesheimer, on August 8-1799 – 8 x 10 ft. for the burial for himself and family, signed by Samuel Bringhurst, pres., and Samuel Mechlin, Sec. [“for the sum of $2.00” is hand-written]

Grandmother's D.A.R. certificate of membership

The descriptive wording strongly suggests Grandma either copied from the original deed, or she had been provided a copy by someone in the family who possessed it. If Grandma didn't have the original deed herself, her uncle, Charles William Hergeshimer, from whom she'd asked help with the application, probably owned it. In her correspondence with Mame Wood, Grandma referred to family papers Charles had at the time of his death. The critical point is that someone in Grandma’s family had Christopher’s deed, and why would that be if he weren’t our ancestor?

Grandma’s great-grandparents, Charles and Catherine (Wurfel—or it’s many variations) Hergesheimer, were her link to Christopher and his first wife, Sara Elizabeth Gilbert. In her supporting evidence for the D.A.R., Grandma referred to “an old bible” in which Catherine’s death year (1857) was recorded. She wrote: “[M]y old uncle Charles Hergesheimer, now of Germantown tells me that he distinctly remembers her death at the home of his father (my grandfather) Samuel Hergesheimer at Rising Sun, Phila. ‘an old woman, a widow for many years—who died of apoplexy’”. Grandma’s uncle would have been 14 years old in 1857, so his memory of his grandmother suddenly dropping dead was probably reliably seared into his brain. That memory supported Grandma’s claim to an ancestor named Catherine Hergesheimer. Oddly, Grandma neglected to amend Catherine’s death year in her supporting evidence, although penciled in the margin of her draft application is this note: “According to the Undertaker’s bill found among [Uncle] Charles’ papers Catherine Warfel [Hergesheimer] was buried Feb. 14, 1855.” An exhaustive (and repreated) search for Catherine (Wurfel) Hergesheimer in the 1850 U.S. census have come up with nothing.

Charles' and Catherine's marriage is the
2nd to the last entry on the page

 However, the claim of descent from Christopher was, and remains, problematic, because there is no definitive proof that Grandma’s great-grandfather, Charles Hergesheimer, was one Christopher and Sara’s son. To date, only three documents relating to Charles Hergesheimer have been found..  The most significant one—because it confirms Christopher had a son named Charles—is an Orphan’s Court petition, filed 22 April 1808 by Christopher’s second wife and widow, Eva Righter. The document lists Christopher’s twelve surviving children by birth order: “Elizabeth, married to Rudolph Fraily; Anthony; George; Ann, married to John Tanner; Samuel; Sarah, married to George Cake; Joseph, Charles; Susan; Margaret; and Catharine, the last three in their minority.” 

The other two documents are church records. The records of St. Michael and Zion Cchurch of Germantown show that on "Mar 21 [1802] Charles Hergesheimer and Caty Worfel, single persons of Philadelphia County" were married. The records of the German Reformed Church in Germantown state: "Oct. 24, 1819, Charles, son of Charles and Catharine Hergesheimer. Died Oct. 22, aged 12 years 4 mo. 6 days." While these latter two records confirm the existence of Grandma's great-grandparents, they do not prove that this Charles is the same one mentioned in the Orphan’s Court petition, and to date, there is no known record that can make that connection.

            There is only one Charles Hergesheimer household fitting what little is known about Charles and Catherine’s household in the U.S. censuses of 1810 and 1820. In 1810, the family lived in Frankford (Philadelphia County) and in 1820 the Unincorporated Northern Liberties (Philadelphia County) where a Catherine Hergesheimer household was enumerated in 1830 and 1840. This household also matches what little we know of the family.

            The absence of birth, death or burial records (beyond the undertaker’s note referred to above, which no longer exists) for Charles and Catherine is a huge problem when trying to link my grandmother’s great-grandparents to Christopher Hergesheimer. There are baptism records for all of Christopher and Sara’s children except Samuel and Charles. The birth order in the Orphan’s Court petition shows that Charles was born in the 9 ½ year period between the birth of his brother Joseph (February 1779) and the death of their mother (June 1788). The petition tells us that Charles had reached his majority in or before April 1808. The Charles Hergesheimer who married in 1802 did not need parental consent, or the record would have stated so. Depending, then, on whether the male age of majority in Pennsylvania at the time was 18 or 21, this Charles would have been born between 1781-1784, a time period consistent what we can estimate about Christopher’s son’s birth.

            Uncle Charles’ memory of his grandmother’s death includes the fact that she’d been a widow for many years. Looking at the make-up of above Hergesheimer households (1810-1840), we see a male child was born between 1821-1825. Assuming this is the last child born to Catherine and Charles makes Charles’ death occur between 1821 and before Census Day (June 1), 1830. Grandma noted in her correspondence with Mame Wood that her grandfather, Samuel Hergesheimer, had a brother named Casper, and I believe he is the male in the census record. Interestingly, Samuel Hergesheimer (Charles and Catherine’s second son) and his wife, Mary Ann Mower, named their third son, Casper Weifel Hergesheimer. (This is how the name appears on the gravestone in Leverington Cemetery.) Could he be named for the brother that Grandma claimed for her grandfather, but for whom there are no other records? And was “Weifel” meant to be “Werfel”, one of the many spelling variations of Catherine’s maiden name?

            What records there are, and what dates can be pieced together from those scant resources, do not provide conclusive evidence that our Charles Hergesheimer is the Charles Hergesheimer who was the son of Christopher and Sara Hergesheimer. All the Hergesheimers in Germantown seem to have been of one family, and there was, at least in the census records, only one Charles whose age range fits with what we can guess would have been the age of Christopher’s son, as well as our ancestor. Grandma asserted that Charles and Catherine are buried in lot 81 in Hood’s Cemetery, the implication being that since lot 81 belonged to Christopher and was bought for the purpose of burying Christopher and his family, this must be his son. Was there family knowledge that Charles and Catherine were buried in a Germantown cemetery, although they lived 5-6 miles away, in a different section of Philadelphia County. Or did  Grandma, desperate to prove a connection, just make an unwarranted assumption? I’ve been through the burial records for Hood’s Cemetery with a fine-tooth comb, and, sadly, there is no record that anyone but Christopher is buried there.

While Grandma didn’t and I can’t firmly establish that our Charles Hergesheimer and Christopher’s son are one and the same person, I’m strongly inclined to believe they are. Many of Christopher’s descendants remained in Germantown for generations, Grandma’s family being one of them (except for a few years in the Northern Liberties and Kensington). And as noted above, all of the Germantown Hergesheimers were related. I can’t prove it—and believe no one ever will be able to—but I feel instinctively that Grandma was, in fact, Christopher Hergesheimer’s direct descendant, through his son Charles. For these reasons, and because of Grandma’s assertion, I took the liberty of making Find-A-Grave memorials for Charles and Catherine in Hood’s. Rest in peace.

The entrance to Hood Cemetery, Germantown

Christopher Hergesheimer's gravestone was erected by the Junior

Order of United American Mechanics, an anti-Catholic, nativist 

group that started in Germantown in 1853. The stone is located in

lot 72, not the lot purchased (above) in 1799, so probably doesn't 

mark Christopher's resting place, nor that of any other family 

member who might be buried in Hood.

Arena (Wilson) McLean: Hotelier

Arena (Wilson) McLean, abt. 1885

 Great-grandmother Arena Wilson (August 9, 1852-December 9, 1926) probably married to get away from home. She was just three months past her sixteenth birthday when she married Warren McLean (September 15, 1847-June 6, 1893). Warren had just turned 21.

Arena was the oldest of Andrew Jackson Wilson and Mary Jane Rambo’s nine children. The youngest child, William, was only seven months old when Mary Jane died at the age of 39. Arena probably saw the writing on the wall: As the oldest child and daughter, she would be expected to take care of her eight siblings. To a 16-year-old, marrying Warren McLean might have seemed not just romantic, but practical. It was a practical move for Warren, too, as his father-in-law, who owned and operated his own bluebird pottery, took on Warren as an apprentice.

If Arena meant to get away from caring for a lot of children, marriage might not have been the best choice; she and Warren had ten children between 1871-1890. However, being the eldest in a large family, and having a large family of one’s own likely honed Arena’s domestic skills. These skills—cooking, baking, washing, cleaning, and being a general care-taker and possible manager of other people—would have equipped Arena for running a boardinghouse. However, Arena had ambitions beyond taking a few boarders into her home. She wanted to build and operate a proper hotel.

Advertisement in Crooksville directory, 1912

When the desire to own and manage her own hotel took hold of Arena will never be known. My cousin says that she helped her mother-in-law, Maxa Ann (Lenhart) McLean run a boardinghouse in White Cottage, and that Maxa deeded her the house. To-date, I’ve found no definitive confirmation for that, although, in the 1900 U.S. census, Arena was living in White Cottage and calling herself a hotel-keeper. Warren had died seven years earlier, leaving Arena to fend for herself and four children aged twelve years old and under.

In 1906, Arena purchased two adjacent town lots in Crooksville, Perry County, Ohio (just up the road from White Cottage). Two years later she and her son Edward purchased one town lot and an adjoining 8/10 acre of land. Edward was a brickmason and a contractor, so this would have been a mutually advantageous arrangement. Edward got to build a large brick edifice that would advertise his skill, and his mother got a hotel made (most likely) to her specifications.

The McLean Hotel under construction. Arena's son, Edward, is 3rd from left.

Arena ran the two-story McLean Hotel on China and Mill  Streets in Crooksville until 1923. She often housed family members in the sizable building, and many of her modern-day descendants recall hearing about life in and around Arena McLean’s hotel. My father remembered his grandmother as a great pie baker. He told me he'd often bicycle the 3.5 miles from Roseville to Crooksville after school to visit her and be treated to a slice of one of her wonderful pies. When she sold the hotel, Arena moved to Columbus and lived with her youngest daughter, Maxie Jane (McLean) Clark until her death.

Arena stands in the side yard of the hotel with her grandaughter
Vivian Miller (left) and and unidentified woman who is possibly
a member of Arena's family. Photo taken abt. 1915.

Arena (Wilson) McLean is interred in the Crooksville Cemetery. According to my cousin, she had been convinced by a salesman that being “an important person in town”, she should purchase a niche in the newly constructed mausoleum there. Lest you think pride led to Arena’s choice of a final resting place, an alternate family story says she made the choice for religious reasons. At some point, Arena and at least one of her brothers became Jehovah’s Witnesses who believe the virtuous dead will be resurrected bodily at the Second Coming. It made sense that if you were interred above ground, your resurrection would be accomplished more quickly and efficiently. Arena was practical to the end.

Arena sits proudly with her children for a reunion photo taken in the backyard of
the hotel in the summer of 1914. The portrait on the left is of a son who couldn't
attend the reunion, and on the right is Arena's deceased husband, Warren McLean.

The McLean Hotel building in 2019.
It's been made into low rent apartments.

Where Did THAT Name Come From?

My maternal grandmother’s father was named Samuel Shiffeler (sometimes spelled “Shiffler”) Hergesheimer, and he named his youngest child Herbert Shiffeler Hergesheimer. That middle name—pretty clearly a surname-- has always been a curiosity to Samuel’s descendants.  Generally, a surname used as a middle name preserves a mother's maiden name or an ancestral surname.  This is not the case for Samuel; no one with the last name of "Shiffeler", "Shiffler" or anything approximating that name has been found in my maternal family tree.  Was Samuel's middle name chosen in admiration of someone unrelated?  This is so with Ferdinand Comfort Sommer, whose middle name honored Samuel Comfort who had been very helpful to Ferdinand's father, Dr. Henry Joseph Sommer, when he served as the American Consul to Bombay. (See “How Grandfather Went Out to India”.)

In one of those serendipities that often occur to family researchers, I might have stumbled on the origin of great-grandfather’s middle name. In 2008, I read about an incident in Philadelphia history* of which I had been unaware. It seems that in 1844, the City of Brotherly Love was the site of two of the deadliest religious and ethnic riots to ever occur in the United States! Named “The Bible Riots” by the Philadelphia press, the first riot began on May 6, 1844 in the industrialized Kensington district where large numbers of recent Irish immigrants had settled. The riot lasted three days and resulted in nine fatalities, dozens of wounded, and the destruction by fire of numerous homes, two Catholic churches, and a convent.

Samuel Shiffler Hergesheimer’s father, Samuel Hergesheimer, and his wife, Mary Ann Mower, might have been living in Kensington when the rioting broke out. (They were enumerated in Kensington in the 1850 U.S. census.) Alternately, they might have been living in the Northern Liberties district which borders Kensington on the south. Samuel was probably born in Unincorporated Northern Liberties in 1811; his mother, Catherine (Wurfel) Hergesheimer was still living there at the time of the riots.

Samuel Hergesheimer, a carpenter, was the grandson of a German immigrant. He and his wife were Protestants: Samuel and Mary Ann were married in the German Reformed Church (also called the Market Square Church) in Germantown in 1841, and Samuel is buried in the Roxboro Baptist Burying Grounds. As a Protestant tradesman, Samuel was likely a “nativist”, a native-born American who resented the recent huge influx of Irish Catholics into the Philadelphia area. The resentment was fueled by the usual fear that immigrants would take jobs from native-born Americans by working for cheaper wages, and that their growing numbers would overwhelm and eventually overturn the existing social norms and values.

When the Catholic bishop of Philadelphia, Francis Patrick Kenrick, called upon school officials to abide by the freedom of religion clause of Pennsylvania's constitution (which guaranteed no preference would be given to any religious establishment in public institutions), he intended to put a stop to the required daily reading of the King James Bible in the public schools. The mandated use of a Protestant Bible and the accompanying requirement to participate in Protestant prayer, said Bishop Kenrick, amounted to imposing a particular religious view on all students, and was, therefore, unconstitutional. For the record, the bishop wasn’t opposed to Bible-reading or prayer in public schools. He reasonably asked that the schools allow Catholic children to read the Douay version of the Bible and be excused from Protestant prayer.

Nativists, however, hostile to the Roman Catholic Church in general, and to its Irish adherents specifically, became hysterical, claiming the bishop wanted to throw the Bible and prayer out of the public schools entirely. In truth, the nativists, most of them hurting from an economic depression that gone on since 1837, were spoiling for a fight, and the bishop had inadvertently given them an excuse to attack, literally, Catholic churches and Irish immigrants. On May 6, 1844, 3000 nativists marched into Kensington intending to show the Irish and the Catholics just who was boss. Shots rang out, and an 18-year-old apprentice leatherworker named George Shifler (sometimes spelled “Shiffler”) fell mortally wounded, the first victim of the rioting. He instantly became a martyr for the nativists, the moment of his death dramatically and patriotically portrayed in a famous lithograph (above). The second riot, which lasted two days, broke out on July 6 in the Southwark section of the city, an area bordering the Northern Liberties on the southeast. Ten more people died, and the church of St. Phillip Neri narrowly escaped the fate of St. Michael and St. Augustine churches in Kensington. State militia were called in to quell both riots.

Did Samuel Hergesheimer take part in the riots? There's no way of knowing, of course. Whether he did or didn't participate, he would undoubtedly have been in sympathy with the rioting Protestant tradesmen.  It’s very possible Samuel knew, or had at least heard of George Shiffler, whose family lived in the Northern Liberties.  When Samuel’s and Mary Ann’s second son was born on June 15, 1845, a little more than a year after the outbreak of the Bible Riots, they might have decided to enshrine George Shifler's "martrydom" in their newborn's middle name.

By the way, nativism evolved into the “American Republican Party”, an anti-Catholic, anti-immigrant, xenophobic political party whose early members were infamously known as “Know Nothings.” Did Samuel himself become a “Know Nothing”?

I’m not even going to go there.

* "Bibles, Public Schools, and Philadelphia's Bloody Riots of 1844" by Bruce Dorsey appeared in the 2008 (v. 8, no. 1) issue of Legacies, a publication of the Historical Society of Pennsylvania).

Merry Christmas, Daisy Melick

This is a time of year for family and nostalgia. There is an old photo in our family collection, featuring Daisy Marguerite Melick at about four years of age, that I’ve always found touching. It’s a charming glimpse of Christmas Past, and very poignant because Daisy Melick did not live to see more than fourteen Christmases.

Daisy Melick sits by the Christmas tree with
her toys, notably, her new doll, "Marguerite"

Daisy Marguerite Melick was the first of two children born to Mary Xema Armstrong (9 May 1884-18 May 1908) and Floyd Beaman Melick (21 March 1880-29 July 1950). Xema was four months shy of turning 15 when Daisy was born on January 9, 1899; she had just turned 24 when she died of “Complications from bowel inflammation”. Nine-year-old Daisy and her four-year-old brother, Charles Armstrong Melick (27 May 1904-18 Apr 1959), were left in the care of their father and their doting grandparents, Alexander (1851-1930) and Nancy E. (Holloway) Armstrong (1852-1929).

Daisy Melick didn’t live long enough to generate many documents. Her birth and death are recorded in the Holloway-Armstrong Family Bible, she was enumerated in the 1900 and 1910 U.S. censuses, and there is a state-issued death certificate. However, Daisy’s short life was memorialized in a number of photographs, including the Christmas one, that show a child much loved and indulged. The photos also seem to show a robustly healthy child, contrasting sharply with the cause of death shown on Daisy’s death certificate: Myocardial insufficiency and nephritis, complicated by rheumatism. According to the attending physician, Daisy had suffered from all these conditions for “one year”. It is possible—even probable—that a year prior to her untimely death, Daisy contracted strep throat or, more likely, scarlet fever, a “scourge” of which was reported by the Times Recorder on February 28, 1913. If not properly treated, either of these illnesses can lead to rheumatic fever, an inflammation of the heart, joints, and central nervous system. Nephritis (kidney disease) is, in turn, associated with heart inflammation and/or disease.

 The death of Daisy Melick was something mentioned on numerous occasions by my grandmother and aunt. It was, for obvious reasons, a family tragedy, made more tragic by the loss of Daisy’s young mother five and a half years earlier. For years, I assumed Daisy had been a sickly child, doomed from birth to an early death.  The death certificate belies that assumption, and suggests that Daisy was healthy until the last year of her life. The photographic record preserves the memory of a hale and hearty child, much loved and well cared for.

Marguerite, the beautiful doll Daisy received one Christmas, was put away after Daisy’s death by her heart-broken grandparents. She was never seen again.

Daisy precociously posed with a book (above),
and all dressed up in her grandparents' yard (below).
Both photos were taken about 1903.

Above and below, Daisy and Charles pose for the camera, about 1906

Daisy and Charles pose with their maternal grandfather, Alex Armstrong on the porch of the Armstrong home, about 1910

Although labeled "Christmas Dinner", this photo, taken in 1908,
is more likely a photo of Daisy's birthday celebration, since Daisy
sits in the place of honor flanked by her parents and with an
array of desserts in front of her. Daisy's maternal grandparents,
her aunt Berite, and her brother on seated on the left.

Daisy dressed to the nines, about 1912

Daisy and Charles, about 1912. Daisy holds Marguerite, the Christmas doll

How Grandfather Went Out to India

Henry Joseph Sommer, M.D., 1893

Mother was proud of her father, Dr. Henry Joseph Sommer, and I grew up hearing about his many accomplishments. One such accomplishment was that, as a young man, Henry has been appointed the American Consul to Bombay, India by President Grover Cleveland. We had several documents relating to this appointment, including Cleveland’s invitation to Grandfather to come to the White House to discuss whether Madras or Bombay would be preferable. Cleveland had agreed to the consular appointment as a favor to Grandfather’s mentor at Jefferson, Dr. William W. Keen. Keen had been part of the medical team assembled by Cleveland’s personal physician in June of 1893 to perform a top-secret surgery on the President to remove a cancerous growth in his soft palate.

            

The strict secrecy surrounding the diagnosis and the necessary surgery was, President Cleveland believed, in the best interest of the nation.  A financial crisis had been brewing since February and was developing into an economic depression.  Cleveland believed knowledge of how seriously ill he was (in 1893, nearly any kind of cancer was regarded as a death sentence) would worsen the depression.

William Williams Keen, M.D.

            

The surgery took place aboard a private yacht on Long Island Sound, and was completely successful. (Actually, there were two surgeries, two weeks apart; the second to repair the damaged hard palate.) A grateful Cleveland, according to Mother, told the doctors that if he could ever do any one of them a favor, they should not hesitate to ask. President Cleveland lived another fifteen years, and succumbed to a heart attack.

            

The secret surgery stayed secret until 1917, when Dr. Keen received permission from Cleveland’s widow to tell the story. Keen recounted the historically and medically important events in The Surgical Operations on President Cleveland in 1893 (George W. Jacobs & Co., Philadelphia, 1917). I was delighted to find on page 48, in Keen’s own words, corroboration of the story I heard from Mother regarding how Grandfather received his consular appointment.

           

Dr. Keen greatly admired President Cleveland as an honest, serious, public servant. In fact, he thought he worked rather too hard and too diligently, and Keen was, so he wrote, reluctant to take the President up on his offer to do a favor. Luckily for Grandfather, he did:       

I never knew any other public man who took the duties of his office more seriously—one might say, so over-conscientiously. Every case that reached him from various courts, civil or military, I have been told, had to have all the evidence presented along with the sentence; and many a midnight hour found him still poring over the documents in the case. Such infinite labor has long been a heavy task for our Presidents. Now it has become a practical impossibility. The President of over one hundred million people should be relieved especially of the huge burden of the appointment of thousands of officeholders in the many department of the Government. The principal and confidential officers, cabinet ministers, judge, members of important commissions, and so on, should be the only presidential appointees. This would give him time and strength to devote to determining the great questions of policy, which the direction of internal affairs, and still more the intricate and often perplexing foreign relations of a great nation, require. His time and strength should not be frittered away by the importunities of applicant and their personal and congressional advocates.

            

Once only did I, myself, transgress this rule, and the time and care he have to this case shamed me. In the autumn of 1893 one of my former medical students [Grandfather graduated from Jefferson in June, 1893] wanted to study tropical diseases. As his means were limited he asked me whether I could obtain for him an appointment as consul at some not too busy place, where there would be leisure for such study. In those days there were no laboratories available for such studies. The work had to be personal and individual.

            

Moreover, there was absolutely no examination for consulships, and the commercial duties represented by our present useful consular reports were often neglected. Accordingly I wrote to Mr. Cleveland, stating the case. Most men in his position would have thought that making the appointment upon the facts as stated in my letter was fully warranted. Not so Mr. Cleveland. He insisted on knowing all about the applicant in detail; and, instead of directing a clerk to write the reply to me, he wrote it himself. When satisfied with the qualifications of the applicant he made the appointment. (pp. 47-48)

Based on Dr. Keen's description of Cleveland's work ethic and personal
attention to detail, it is possible this envelope and the contents
were written by President Cleveland himself. 

The strong opinion William Keen expressed against those seeking presidential favors, and his willingness to do so on Grandfather’s behalf, show that this eminent surgeon held Grandfather both personally and professionally in high esteem. President Cleveland’s response to Dr. Keen’s appeal shows his respect for Keen, and the depth of his gratitude. Grandfather met with President Cleveland in mid-October, and received his appointment as United State Consul to Bombay on 18 November 1893. By March 1894, he was settled into his apartments in Bombay where he remained until illness forced him to resign his post and return to the United States.

State Department document confirming the
appointment of Henry J. Sommer as U.S.
Consul at Bombay, India, November 18, 1893

After his return to the United States, Grandfather briefly went into private practice, before becoming a pathologist at the State Hospital at Norristown, Pennsylvania.  In 1908, he became the superintendent of the Blair County Hospital for the Insane in Hollidaysburg, Pennsylvania, a position he held until his death in 1937. Superintendent Sommer was often asked to lecture on a variety of topics, one of them being what he learned when he went out to India. (His penciled lecture notes are part of my collection of family documents.)

Rebecca (Scholfield) Dolson's Letter to Her Sister

Among the family treasures preserved by my Grandmother McLean were three old letters from one family member to another. The oldest of the three is dated “June the Sixth” and postmarked “Clark Ill June 7^th 1828”. It’s a chatty letter written by Rebecca (Scholfield) Dolson to her sister Lydia (Scholfield) McDonald, telling about her new home in Clark County, Illinois (she and her husband Benjamin had moved there about 1822), and asking after family members still in Newton Township, Muskingum County, Ohio.

Page one of Rebecca's letter

The actual letter is oversized, and was folded into a small square for mailing. No envelope was used; the address was written on the folded letter. Although a rudimentary mail system existed, there was no home pickup or delivery, and certainly no mailbox down the road. A letter writer in a remote rural area waited until a trip to town was warranted to “post” a letter. If someone stopped by the homestead on the way to town, the writer might entrust the letter to him. Once a letter got to town, it would go to the postmaster who saw it was put on the right stage coach. Railroads would later carry the mail from one town to the next, but in 1828, horsepower was the only way to go. On the receiving end, the letter would be kept at the post office waiting for someone to stop by and inquire whether or not there was any mail. The letter Lydia (or someone in her family) was handed had no stamp, but there was a fee involved. In order to get the letter, the recipient had to pay the postmaster for the mailing cost.

Page two of Rebecca's letter. The mailing address is on the right

When Lydia got home with the letter, she would have certainly read it to her family and then probably passed it around to be read by individuals. A modern reader, fixated on the rules of written text, would struggle a bit with the letter. Rebecca’s letter is filled with phonetic, non-standard spelling, a glancing blow at capitalization, and not a single punctuation mark. It took me many readings before I came up with a complete transcription. The letter, for me, turned out to be more than just a valuable genealogical resource. It is for me, a literacy teacher, a wonderful example of the importance of reading to get the writer’s message, no matter how non-standard the presentation. When I read this letter, I “hear” Rebecca Scholfield Dolson: she loved her family, and missed them (as she would have written it “mitely”), even though her new life was good; she was impatient to hear from them and chided Lydia gently (“this is the Second lettrer I rote Since I got enny”); she had a sense of humor, ending the letter “if you cant read this letter fetch it to me and I will reade it for you.”

Over the years, I found out more about Rebecca’s life than one might expect to find about a woman who lived 150 years ago. For this information, I am indebted to another Scholfield letter-writer, Rebecca’s brother Thomas who wrote a letter to their brother, my great-great-great grandfather, Lemuel C. Scholfield, in 1868. However, I’ll wait for another time to continue Rebecca’s story. (The details of Thomas’ letter can be found in my article, “Unintended Family History: Thomas Scholfield’s Letter to His Brother”, which was published in the Ohio Genealogical Society Quarterly in 2016.)

Below is my transcription of Rebecca’s letter. Listen for her voice.

                                                                                                            Ilinoys Clark County

Dear Sister with pleasure I embrace this opportunity to inform you that wee ar both well at present hopen these few lins will find you all in the same helth wee hav nad no Sickness Sence wee have bin here It is a very helthy place I am vary well [illegible] when I thin About you all Sum tims I think I never well See enney of you a gain But Benjamin tells me that he well fetch me to See you all in two or three year I have no hope of Seein enny of you come to See me I think if you all knode what a fine place this is you wood leve where you live wee had no neighbours when wee first come here bout now wee have a plenty wee are dooin vary well in the way of property wee have a fine stock round us and nice young orchard Set out Bout Sume times I set and think About you all and the wattre runs Mity free tha puts in mind of what unkil William used to Say a bout me tell Thomas I am Much a blige to him for comin to See me as he promised bout won thing I now if he don’t see fet to come he must Stay this is the Second lettrer I rote Since I got enny if you git this I want you to write as Soon as you Can for I want to here from you all [illegible] more if I cant git to see you I wish to be remembered to Sister ann And family and to broher Lemuel and Thomas and to aunt Elizabeth and aunt Rebecca and to poor old Mother in perticler tell ann to write me the next letter if it was posabel for you to move I think you would Dough better than you can whre you leve ther cant be no better palce for [illegible] Stock than this nothing more at present but remainin your loven Sister until Death if you cant read this letter fetch it to me and I will reade it for you

                                                                                                            June the Sixth

Rebecca Dolson                                                                      Lydia McDonald

[Addressed]

Mrs Lydia McDonald

Ohio Muskingum County union town post office Uniontown Ohio

[Postmarked]

Henry J. Sommer's "Seegars"

The Coat of Arms of the Duchy of Baden tops
Heinrich Josef Sommer's 1859 passport

Great-grandfather Heinrich Josef Sommer [pronounced with a "z" and a long "o"] arrived at Castle Garden, New York City's immigration center before Ellis Island, on May 13, 1859 aboard the ship Mercury. His passport was issued by authorities in his hometown of Weinhein, Duchy of Baden about six weeks earlier. Between Heinrich's passport and the Mercury's manifest, I know Great-grandfather sailed to the the United States from Hamburg in northern Germany via LeHavre, France. He had booked passage through Chrystie, Schlossman & Co., a travel agent for Badischer citizens emigrating to the United States. The company made all the travel arrangements, including ship and railway fares, overnight accommodations (as in LeHavre), and insured the emigrant's belongings. Food costs for the voyage were provided, although the emigrant was responsible for procuring the food ahead of time. Heinrich was housed on deck.

Henry was assigned to Co. F,
29th NY Infantry Regiment

Although being housed on deck sounds a bit rough and cut-rate, we don't know the actual conditions of Heinrich's accommodation. It's unlikely he was an impoverished immigrant. The contract with Chrystie, Scholssman & Co. couldn't have been cheap. His family was probably comfortably well-off; his father, Franz Heinrich Sommer was a soap-maker which was a skilled trade. On July 16, 1855, Heinrich earned a certificate from a school in Mannheim showing his successful completion of an apprenticeship in "business knowledge [management]" which qualified him as a merchant. Heinrich had probably procured a job before ever setting sail; he was employed as a leaf tobacco dealer with the "seegar" importer L. Bamberger & Co. almost immediately upon arrival in the United States.

Heinrich anglicized his name as soon as he arrived in the United States. He became Henry Joseph Sommer [pronounced "summer"], and bequeathed his new name to three more generations before a great-grandson, on the birth of his son, said: "Enough!"

H. Sommer Co. cigar brand

Henry was a man of ambition and determination. In 1861, when President Lincoln called for men to enlist in the army following the attack on Fort Sumter, South Carolina, Henry Sommer was quick to enlist as a private in the 29th New York Infantry Regiment (also known as the 1st German Infantry because it was comprised primarily of German immigrants). He might have enlisted out of a fervor for his new homeland, but it's more likely he responded, as did so many immigrant men and boys, out of self-interest. Enlisting promised an expedited path to U.S. citizenship, and citizenship would open up additional opportunities for an up-and-coming young man. For good measure, Henry even re-enlisted in the army, and then at the end of that enlistment period, joined the Marines. He became a citizen shortly after the war's end.

H. Sommer Co. cigar brand

Henry returned to L. Bamberger & Co. as a book-keeper for a couple of years at the end of his military service. He married Anna Maria Katharina [Mary Catherine] Rühl in Philadelphia on May 18, 1867. The couple set up residence in Milford, Bucks County, north of Philadelphia, and then set about starting a family, the first of their five children being born one year after their marriage.

H. Sommer Co. cigar brand

Meanwhile, Henry set up a cigar factor for L. Bamberger in nearby Quakertown, By 1873, he was prosperous enough to buy out the local enterprise and rename it the H. Sommer Co. Henry's main factory was in Quakertown, next door to the family home. By 1905 he had established at least seven smaller factories throughout the
area, becoming one of the most prominent and prolific manufacturers of affordable cigars in the country. He died on January 14, 1910 and left the business to his three sons: Ferdinand, Henry Jr., and Edmund. Within ten years, Henry Jr. and Edmund relinquished their business interests to Ferd ,who ran the business until its closure in 1937.

Female employees pose in front of the main factory.

Shipping label for one of the company's most popular brands